CA Anti-virus Software Review

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Let's say you had no immune system whatsoever... Would you walk into a room full of people who are infected with contagious and deadly diseases? If you log onto the Web without advanced anti-virus protection, it's pretty much the same thing as far as your computer is concerned. When CA released the 2008 version of it's comprehensive anti-virus software, we wanted to put it to the Star test. Wondering if it passed with flying colors? The results are in...

What's New?

One license protects up to 3 PCs.
Free system scan available via the CA website.
Faster system scans.

The CA Anti-Virus 2008 Experience:

The download and installation of CA Anti-Virus 2008 was simple and straightforward. We really didn't run into any problems during the process. However, unless you want Yahoo's third-party toolbar installed right along with CA Anti-Virus 2008, we suggest you look closely at your install options and make sure that check-box is left unchecked.

Once we had CA Anti-Virus 2008 up and running we found the interface to be very user friendly. Updates and scans were all available at the click of a mouse. CA Anti-Virus 2008 offers the standards of anti-virus protection. Nothing more, nothing less. Email scanning, automatic updates and quarantine features are par for the course.

One thing we did notice is that CA seems to be scanning faster with this year's version of the product. We expected to be twiddling our thumbs for quite a while as CA scanned our hard drive. We were pleasantly surprised when it finished much earlier than we had anticipated.

Features:

Automatic file scanning.
Automatic email scanning.
Automatic live updates.
Scheduled and on-demand hard drive scanning.
Archive scanning.
Interactive virus detection messages.
Threat outbreak warning system.
File exclusion lists.
File quarantine.

Pricing:

CA Anti-Virus 2008 costs $39.99 for a one-year, 3-user license.

CA Anti-Virus 2008 Customer Service:

We have to say, we are still a bit disappointed with CA's customer support. There are help files available, but they seem to be lacking in depth. Web support is available via an online help form, but it took CA two days to get back to us with an answer to our questions. Chat support is also available now, although they seem to be working through some glitches.

After filling out an extensive form, we had to allow CA to install software on our system before we could access live chat support. We really don't like having unknown software installed on our PC, especially since chat support should not require a any software downloads.

It took about 3 minutes to get the chat support software installed and running and then we received a message saying we were number five in the que of customers waiting to speak with a rep. After waiting almost 10 minutes, we got fed up and disconnected.

Perhaps chat support isn't as helpful as it should be because CA wants customers to use phone support, which is a pay-per-support option. Yes, that's right. If you want to talk to a rep, get ready to fork over about twenty bucks. This did not sit well with the team here at Star Reviews.

Upside:

Fast scanning, threat outbreak warnings, protects up to 3 PCs.

Downside:

Support could use improvement.

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